The historic city centre of Terracina stands on two hills facing the sea: the lower one was the place where the first inhabitants lived, while the higher one, called the hill of San Francesco, became the seat of the acropolis. We have some information about the origin of the place through literary documents. At first it was the centre of the Ausoni, then at the end of the 6th century B.C., the town was probably under the Roman dominion as we can read in the first treaty between Rome and Carthage, quoted by Polibio. Later on the town was invaded by the Volscians who changed its name from “Tarracina” into “Anxur”, perhaps some parts of the walls of polygonal stonework, which can be seen in several points under the late-ancient belt, may have been built in this period. Instead, other points of the walls are parts of the fortifications that the Romans built after conquering the town again in 406 B.C. when they founded a “colonia maritima” (a seaside colony) in 329 B.C. A few years later in 312 B.C., the Via Appia crossed the town; this road linked Rome to Capua and it was very important from the military and commercial point of view because it reached the rich and fertile southern area of the peninsula. Terracina became an important town both thanks to the Via Appia, which linked the town to Rome in a shorter time, and the building of its port. The town became a famous agricultural centre after the intensive method of exploitation of the fertile west valley and it enlarged in the lower part near the sea. The original part of the town where the first inhabitants had settled, became an area rich in monuments and mansions. At the end of 2nd century B.C., after the restructuring of the holy area of the acropolis, a first new town-planning look place during the age of Silla (first decades of the 1st century B.C.). Several monuments in “opus incertum” (among which the theatre) were built in this period together to the rebuilding of the large sanctuary of Monte S. Angelo. There was a new changing in the structure of the town during the first imperial age., that is between the end of the first century B.C. and the beginning of the following one; a new forum was built in the top part of the town under the supervision of the local magistrate A. Aemilius as well as the square whit porticos all around and religious and civil building so that the area became a place full of monuments and Terracina could compare whit the most famous towns in the Roman Empire. The lower part of the town grew rapidly, and enlarged more and more thanks to the cutting away of Pisco Montano, the new Via Appia which reaches the sea just here, and the rebuilding of the port; all these works were attributed to Trajan (98-117 A.D.).Instead, some modifications and especially restructures of the old “domus” were carried out in the top part of the town as we can see from a peristyle belonging to the 2nd and 3rd century A.D. containing some mosaic decorations and found a few years ago not far from the “Capitolium”. The last and important change in the barbarian invasions, the ancient Volsco-Roman circuit of walls was replaced with a new fortification containing also a part of the lower town.